Alexander Alexandrov and Evgeny Erofeev met with the OSCE

OSCE representatives met with Russian citizens Alexander Alexandrov and Evgeniy Yerofeyev, whom Ukrainian security forces detained on May 16 near the town of Shchastya in the Lugansk region. They told observers that they were active military personnel, but noted that Russian troops were not participating in the battles in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian security forces suspect the detainees of terrorism and are not going to extradite them to Russia “at this stage.”

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Photo: SBU

Representatives of the OSCE special monitoring mission and the UN human rights mission visited Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Erofeev in a Kiev military hospital. The names of the detainees, whom the SBU considers to be servicemen of the 3rd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade of the GRU of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, are not directly mentioned in the OSCE report for May 20, but both the date of detention and the place completely coincide with the SBU reports about the capture of Sergeant Alexandrov and Captain Erofeev. The document says that the detainees confirmed that they were active servicemen of the Russian army and stated that they were “on a reconnaissance mission.” The report states that “they were armed, but did not have the order to advance,” and emphasizes that one of the detainees especially insisted: the regular army does not take part in the battles in southeast Ukraine.

Russians detained during the battle in Donbass were accused of terrorism

The representative of the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine, Michael Botsyurkiv, who was present at the meeting, told Kommersant that the communication took place on OSCE terms, that is, without SBU officers, and lasted about 90 minutes. Mr. Botsyurkiw admitted that the statements of the detainees about their assignment in Ukraine and the statement that military personnel from Russia are not conducting combat operations there contradict each other, but he refused to comment on this matter. “Our task was to communicate with the detainees, to record their statements, and not to comment on their words,” he noted.

The Russian embassy in Kyiv said yesterday that a representative of the consulate has been unable to obtain a meeting with Alexandrov and Yerofeyev for three days. On May 20 and 21, the Rossiya 24 TV channel aired two interviews with relatives of the detainees. In the first, Sergeant Alexandrov’s wife, Ekaterina, claimed that her husband resigned from service in December 2014, after which, without informing her, he went to Lugansk. In the second, Captain Erofeev’s father, Vladimir, stated that his son left the army at the beginning of 2015, after which he decided to go to Lugansk. The SBU questioned Ms. Alexandrova’s words; the Ukrainian security forces did not comment on Father Yerofeyev’s statement yesterday.

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But SBU representative Vitaly Naida said that the detained Russians are suspected of committing “terrorist actions” under Part 3 of Art. 258 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. “They can be sentenced to a term of 15 years,” he said. Advisor to the head of the SBU Markiyan Lubkivsky, in turn, noted that the investigation will be “long and scrupulous,” and did not rule out that “other charges may be brought forward as part of this investigation.” “At this stage, the issue of transferring Russian military personnel is irrelevant,” he added.

Yesterday, the SBU published a list of soldiers of the 3rd separate guards special forces brigade of the GRU, who, according to the department, took part in hostilities. In total, the list contains 63 names in ranks from corporal to lieutenant colonel. The SBU claims that the servicemen were based in Lugansk and carried out various tasks on the territory of Ukraine since March 2014, but after the detention of Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev, the brigade returned to Russian territory.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation did not comment on the OSCE report yesterday, although earlier an official representative of the department stated that not active, but former military personnel with military training were detained near Shchastya.

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